Original Item. Only One Available. This is a nearly impossible-to-find piece of Imperial German field gear, an original WWI M1893 Zeltbahn in fantastic condition with all of its grommets retained. The few of these you see pop up often have many of the grommets missing, as there wasn’t much fabric in between them on the corners, allowing them to rip off easily, but this example retains them all, as well as the original tentpoles in the bag.

These were used as tents, blankets, shelters and rain capes. Two, to as many as the troops wanted, could be buttoned together to make a large shelter. This example retains several markings, including a maker’s stamp:

Schumann Comp.
Oederan
1916

Another marking reads B.A.X. II. 16. Denoting repair at XII Armee-Korps (Dresden) in 1916. A third marking reads 177.R. which could denote the 177th infantry regiment, but of this we aren’t certain.

The included poles comes in a canvas bag with leather belt straps. There are four poles retained with separate rope, all in heavily worn condition. 

A very rare piece of German field gear, the second of its kind we have offered and the first with markings as good as these. Comes ready for further research and display.

Forming a roll around the field pack this shelter half was an essential part of a Marine's field equipment!

A shelter-half is a simple kind of partial tent designed to provide temporary shelter and concealment when combined with one or more sections. Two sheets of canvas or a similar material (the halves) are fastened together with snaps, straps or buttons to form a larger surface. The shelter-half is then erected using poles, ropes, pegs, and whatever tools are on hand, forming an inverted V structure. Small tents like these are often called pup tents in American English.

Shelter halves are a mainstay of most armies, and are known from the mid 19th century. Often, each soldier carries one shelter-half and half the poles, etc., and they pair off to erect a two-man tent. The size and shape of each half shelter piece may vary from army to army, but are typically rectangular, triangular or lozenge shaped. When time and space allow, some forms of half-shelters can be combined into a larger, more complex tent.

Shelter-halves are usually designed to serve double duty as ponchos against the rain, or for the concealment of snipers. While the fabric is often simple olive drab, several nations use camouflage fabric. The first printed camouflage for soldiers was the Italian Telo mimetico introduced in 1929 for their half-shelters. The first camouflage uniforms were the Second World War German paratrooper smock, based on their M1931 Splittermuster shelter-halves. Russian Army has used Plasch-palatkas (literally "cape-tents", designed to be used as both a part of a larger tent cover, or an individual weatherproof cape) since 1894, and the modern version, virtually unchanged since, was introduced in 1936, with the camo version being available since 1942. To add some confusion, the ordinary waterproofed cape with a similar name (plasch-nakidka, "cape-overcoat") was issued at the same time, but these weren't intended to combine with each other.